
ADDRESS 



THE ALUMNI 



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BY 



WILLIAM 13. KEED, 



November 13th, 1849. 



PHILADELPHIA: 
HENRY LONGSTRETH, 347 MARKET STREET. 
1849. 




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ADDEESS 



THE ALUMNI 



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BY 



WILLIAM B. KEED, 



November 13th, 1849. 



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*> PHILADELPHIA: 
HENRY LONGSTRETH, 347 MARKET STREET. 
1850. 



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CORRESPONDENCE. 



University of Pennsylvania, 1 

Philadelphia, Nov. 28th, 1849.-* 

Sir: 

. We have been appointed a Committee by the Board of Managers of the Society of 
the Alumni, to communicate to you the following resolutions which were unanimously adopted at 
the meeting, held in the College Hall, this afternoon. 

" Resolved, That the thanks of the Society of the Alumni be presented to William B. Reed, Esq. 
for the able, eloquent, and instructive Oration delivered at the Centennial Anniversary of the Uni- 
versity on the 13th inst. 

Is " Resolved, That a Committee of five be appointed to convey the above resolution to Mr. Reed, 
and to request of him a copy of his Oration for publication by the Society." 

The performance of this duty is a source of much pleasure to us, and we trust that the character 
of the Oration— the occasion on which it was delivered, and the favor with which it was received, 
will induce you to consent to its publication. 

With great respect, we remain your obedient servants, 

HORATIO G. JONES, JR. 
ISAAC HAYS. 
JAMES C. BOOTH. 
JOHN P. FRAZER. 
JOHN B. GEST. 
To W. B. Reed, Esq. 



Philadelphia, December 10th, 1S49. 
Gentlemen : 

I place my Address at your disposal, and thank you for the kind opinion you express 
of my effort to do good to our University. 

Very respectfully yonr friend, 

WILLIAM B. REED. 
Messrs. Jones, Hats, Booth, Frazer and Gest, 

Committee of Alumni. 



ADDRESS 



GrENTLEMEN OF THE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION : 

On Dr. Franklin's return from his most brilliant visit to Europe, 
where for eight years he had been the companion of princes and 
nobles, of philosophers and wits, — the inmate of a Court, even 
in its decay, the most fascinating and luxurious the modern world 
had ever seen, the following entry appears to have been made 
in his Diary : 

" Wednesday, September 14, 1785. With the flood-tide in the 
morning came a light breeze, which brought us above Glocester 
Point, and then we saw Dear Philadelphia." 

This is my text to-night, < Dear Philadelphia ;' the home of our 
nativity, of our education, of our school and college days — of our 
manhood and active life ; whose modest charms, simple and unob- 
trusive in every sense, are more interwoven in our fancy than we 
are aware of; whose resources, physical and intellectual, we enjoy 
half the time without appreciating them ; whose honors any one 
may be proud to share ; — in short, this City of ours, with its claims, 
especially in relation to mental culture and high education, is a 
theme which, in a spirit of honest and manly self-complacency, I 
think well worth illustration. Especially is it so at the hands of 
those who have met together as children of an Institution of 
learning so venerable and so beneficent as this. For self-compla- 
cency I have no apologies to make. I am speaking to Phila- 
delphians of Philadelphia ; and my wish is to utter some words 
that may invigorate the sentiment of local pride which is a 
community's surest reliance. 

There is no one amongst us, who has ever bestowed a serious 
thought on the subject, that does not feel, — strangers have dis- 
covered it, and we may as well confess it, — that the defect of our 
character is a habit of mutual and self-disparagement. We are 
not true to each other. We are not loyal to our home. We have 
allowed other parts of the country to boast us into silence. In 
Boston, — indeed, any where in wonder-working New England, — 



there is pride and mutual admiration and hearty praise ; and if it be 
sometimes carried to an extreme that provokes a smile, it rests on 
a salutary principle, which produces its fruits in the moral and 
intellectual achievements of New England's sons. In Virginia, 
— < the Old Dominion,' — a kindred spirit of self-exaltation yet pre- 
vails. Virginians are proud of their State and of each other ; 
and this immortal pride in herself and in her children, is the 
strongest element of strength that is left to her. Whilst here in 
Pennsylvania — here, though I hope in a less degree in Philadel- 
phia, disloyalty to our State, detraction or at least disparage- 
ment of one another, hangs over us like a dark and chilly vapour 
through which, though the seed and the root and trunk are here, 
no bright foliage ever pierces to attract the admiration of the 
distant world, even within the Nation's borders. Now, this is 
truth ; and there is no use in disguising it. It is truth which 
strikes the eye on every page of our history, recent and remote ; 
and there was as much shrewd sense as caricature in the remark 
of the sagacious foreigner, so many of whose quaint illustrations 
live in our tradition, that Pennsylvania and her public men 
reminded him of boys running behind a carriage in the street ; 
all active, all anxious, all at the top of their speed, but the 
moment when one more active than the rest gained the seat and 
distanced his competitors, there was a chorus of, " cut behind !" 
from all the rest, and down he was sure to come.* The wrecks 
of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia fame, which strew the path of 
our history ; the narrow sphere within which has been confined 
the light of her genius, (and we have had in the past, and have 
now at the present, lights of as pure and serene a ray as ever 
burned) ; the triumphs of immigrant mediocrity, the disappoint- 
ments of native merit, all illustrate this humiliating truth. And 
one object I have in view to-night, (and my heart, proud as it will 
ever be of Philadelphia and her fame, tells me no Philadelphia 
scholar will find fault with the attempt)— nay, my main object is, 
incidentally, and with such desultory thoughts as I have been 
able to collect, to try to arouse a new, a bolder, and more 
mutually generous spirit of pride in ourselves, in our institutions, 
and in no one more so than in this now ancient seminary of learning, 
whose first century of existence has to-day expired, within whose 
walls we gained what every man is more or less proud to have, 
with all its imperfections, our College training ; whose academical 
degrees, easily as in former days they may have been Avon, we are 
* The Abbe Correa. 



not ashamed of ; and to whose destinies for the future, with a 
wider capacity for usefulness, we look forward with hope and 
confidence that will not easily bear disappointment. 

I desire to speak words of truth, and I hope consolatory truth, 
in Philadelphia ears. They will be said with no ornament of 
rhetoric, and certainly with no exaggeration of style, but soberly, 
unambitiously, familiarly. I have come to-night to this brother- 
hood of old acquaintances to talk without form ; and I ask no 
more than the kind and patient attention, which friends give to 
a truth-telling friend. 

It is not very easy to trace the defect of Philadelphia character, 
this habit of self-disparagement, to its source. My own impres- 
sion, the fruit of some earnest thought on the subject, is that 
finding it, as I do, apparent on every page of our story social and 
political, in the days of colonial dependence, and afterwards 
during and subsequent to the Revolution, it has its root in the 
mixture of races which always, for better or for worse, has been 
our peculiarity here, and in the want of a picturesque and charac- 
teristic lineage. How few original Pennsylvania names survive ; 
how vast the infusion of nomenclature from abroad, from every 
quarter, North and East and South. And then so far as fancy 
is affected by the past, so far as loyalty is supposed to rest on 
the fascinations or romance of history, our story, that at least 
of the foundation of our community, certainly was not pictur- 
esque. The imagination takes no hold on it. The solitary 
picture which we have of the Elm Tree Treaty, is as unattrac- 
tive as it is possible to conceive the fruit of the pencil to be. 
Were it not for the recumbent Indian in the foreground, with his 
swarthy limbs and a few bright patches of red paint on his cheek, 
utterly dull and dismal would be the result. From 1682 to the 
day when the first gun shot of the Revolution was fired, there is 
scarcely a picturesque incident in our dreary annals. Now, who 
will doubt that this matter of the poetry, the romance of a 
nation's infant story, has a direct efiect on a nation's mind. There 
are traces yet of the Cavalier in the South — of the soldier of adven- 
ture saved by the Indian girl. No one ever saw the tower 
of the church at Jamestown, America's only ruin, without a 
memory of this. Farther South, there are traces of a better 
ancestry still, in the French pilgrims who, fleeing from the 
sharp sword of religious persecution, the most relentless weapon 
which human perversity ever draws, brought to Carolina the 
heroism of the Continental Protestants. There is beauty and 



fascination in the landing at St. Mary's, with, the crucifix raised 
and the censer waving. The Rock of Plymouth (almost worn 
down by the praises that have been pounded on it,) still is pictur- 
esque ; and the May FloAver is a name of beauty and music, 
though her freight was of stern men. All Jthis in our colonial 
historv is denied us. We crave something in our story for the 
fancy to cling to, and finding nothing, we are apt to look else- 
where; and with no music of our own, join in the songs of other 
climes. Depend on it, this matter of origin and historical 
romance has had its great and controlling influence. 

Very soon began the dismal story of colonial infirmity. It 
is sad to think of it ; and who can wonder, as he turns over the 
pages of our only historian, worthy but very dull Robert Proud, 
and reads the record of small squabbles and ungraceful bickerings, 
that the student, let his disposition be as loyal as it may, if he 
does not throw it aside in absolute disgust, lays it gladly down 
and takes up the story of other lands, with a sense of relief which 
tells how strong the contrast is. It was not long before the in- 
vasion of strangers began. The void which absenteeism made in 
Pennsylvania was filled by adventurers from every quarter, good 
and bad. Strangers were every where, and strangers are every 
where yet. And it is a curious fact, that when many years later 
the Revolution began, and a new and independent government was 
organized, every high officer of that Government was from a dis- 
tance. Neither the Governor, nor the Attorney-General, nor the 
Chief Justice of the new State could boast of having been born on 
the soil, or even, having lived here more than a very few years. 
Let me not for one moment be understood to say that to these 
strangers we owe no debt of gratitude. I simply mean to state a 
fact as accounting for a defect of character. 

Of the founder of this colony, it is difficult to speak justly, 
even here in Philadelphia, without danger of being sadly mis- 
understood; and the more difficult as lately the censoriousness of 
a brilliant foreign writer, has rather put us Pennsylvanians on 
our mettle. It seems to be assumed, that because Mr. Macaulay, 
in the true spirit of his fault-finding countrymen, has thought 
fit to shoot some arrows of venomous rhetoric at the memory of 
William Penn, we Pennsylvanians must get into a paroxysm of 
loyal resentment, and with eyes shut to the errors and defects of 
his personal character, run a furious tilt with his detractor. I 
am free to say, Pennsylvanian as in spirit I am, that I see no such 
necessity, and on this account feel no resentment. Pennsylvanians 



may take a strong and clear distinction between Penn's character 
as an American lawgiver and an English courtier — between 
the years, only four of them, which he passed in the woods that 
skirted the Delaware, by his presence encouraging his plans of 
benevolent forecast, and those dismal years when he lived a weary 
hanger-on on the most selfish tyrant that ever sat on the English 
throne. Nay, I am content to go farther, with no forfeiture of 
my loyal fealty, and to contrast with pride William Penn's still 
earlier career while he was planning in England his colonial 
enterprise, and writing or thinking of his wonderful project of 
legislation and policy, (for wonderful at his day it was,) and his 
later life of humiliation. What he did in America, and for 
America, is worthy of all praise. What he did or failed to do when 
he turned his back on this poor deserted colony, I cannot feel 
myself called on at all hazards to defend. The great achieve- 
ment of his life, and that Mr. Macaulay cannot comprehend, was 
the founding of a great commonwealth, such as this has grown to 
be — the worst and fatal error of his course, (and let us be proud, 
not ashamed, to admit it,) was when he left it. The British his- 
torian may be right or wrong, just or unjust, in his disinterment 
of the scandals about the maids of honor, or the University of 
Oxford, so far as they are supposed to affect our founder. 
"William Penn was a man of British history when these scandals 
occurred. His American fame is far above them. It is part of 
the vicious Anglicanism of our times to be sensitive of such a 
point as this. 

The sober minded student of Mr. Macaulay's great work, let 
me say in passing, may find graver fault with it than this, when 
he remembers the studious and almost contemptuous silence on 
what, if it is not now, soon will be considered to be the greatest 
feature of English history, in the times of which he writes, the 
foundation and early growth of the British settlements on this 
side of the Atlantic. He might have had his fling at the English 
courtier Penn, if he had said a word or bestowed a thought on 
Pennsylvania, or any one of those branches of the great tree of 
British constitutional freedom, which, torn from the parent stem 
and whirled hither by rude blasts of violence, took root and 
bloomed and flourished. From 1620, long before which his 
sketch of England begins, to 1688, where it now ends, English 
liberty, — law and liberty, — were growing here. Here was spring- 
ing up, on the edge of the forest, the great institution of purified 
English freedom, which, at this very moment, is stronger and 



8 

safer and surer, not even excepting the mother fabric itself, than 
any human institution which now survives. Here was growing 
up a race of robust Anglo-Americans, invigorated by persecution 
and adversity, who, in rescue of the world, were to resist tyranny, 
secular and ecclesiastical, on this side of the Atlantic, and never 
to relapse as England did. Here were questions of civil liberty, 
decided or contested on matters of American charters, quite as 
grave as those which were discussed in relation to the city of 
London or the Seven Bishops. Here was beginning that great 
reading community, which in so short a time was to be the main 
propagator of English literature, and which now has published 
and circulated for actual use, one hundred thousand copies of 
Mr. Macaulay's history : five times as many as his own country- 
men dreamed of printing. Here, among the children whom Eng- 
land has driven from her side, and whose applause and sympathies 
Englishmen look on with so much indifference, will, by and by, be 
found the great security and safeguard of English literature. It is 
but the other day, that on the pages of a contemporary British 
writer but little known in this country, my eye lighted on a passage 
which made my heart thrill with pride, as a common inheritor of the 
fame of English literature. "Were it possible," says this author, 
" for the institutions of England to be destroyed — for our great 
interests in their collision to shatter each other to pieces — for our 
mighty military and naval power to be annihilated, and our trade 
utterly to fail — for pestilence to make this island one great grave 
— for natural convulsions, volcanoes and earthquakes to desolate 
the soil, till it became an uninhabitable island ; still would pilgrim- 
vessels seek our shore, and devotees land from them to express 
their reverence for the spot where Shakspeare and Milton lived, 
and wrote and produced their never dying creations."* And as I 
read, my American heart beat proudly at the thought, that when 
the day of desolation comes, — may it be long averted, — those 
pilgrims and devotees must be my own countrymen, whose glory 
and richest heritage it is to speak the tongue which Shakspeare 
wrote and Milton sung. 

The disparaging defect of our local character then is manifest. 
Its sources, however remote, I have sought thus cursorily to indi- 
cate. Will not the speculation be pardoned to-night, if in the 
same strain of familiar and desultory remark, I seek to point a 
remedy ? 

This University has always seemed to me, in the aspect to which 
, * Fox's Lectures to the Working Classes. 



9 

I have alluded, eminently a Philadelphia institution. Its real 
history is unknown, its services in the past, its present capacity 
for usefulness, are disparaged here amongst ourselves ; and its 
promises for the future are not relied on. Is not this eminently 
our mode of doing injustice to ourselves ? Do I state this too 
strongly ? 

How few are there within the sound of my voice, who have 
come to-night within these college walls, as children of a gracious 
mother ; how few in this city where for a century this Institution 
has modestly grown, nursing on its now ancient benches, talent 
and intellectual merit, that either here or at a distance, — for we, 
too, have distant graduates, — has done its work of usefulness, and 
made its mark on the history of our country ? How few know any 
thing of its rich records ? Till within a year, and then it was done 
by the Alumni, no historical catalogue ever was published ; and 
to that catalogue, rich as I shall show with honored names, or 
names that would be honored did they not belong to Philadelphia, 
how few eyes are turned. May I, then, ask to-night, even from 
those who habitually think of and are interested in matters alien 
to ourselves, some little thought on what has been done, and may 
yet be done, by ourselves here at home ? 

A century of college history has just passed away. On the 
13th of November, 1749, the thirty-six Philadelphia Trustees 
met and signed the fundamental rules for the Institution of the 
Philadelphia College, Academy and Charitable School. These 
thirty-six names, some of which by that sure process which 
seems to defy all attempts to perpetuate names and families, have 
faded away from existence, ought in Philadelphia to be held in 
perpetual remembrance. They were James Logan, Thomas 
Lawrence, William Allen, John Inglis, Tench Francis, William 
Masters, Lloyd Zachary, Samuel McCall, Joseph Turner, Benjamin 
Franklin, Thomas Leech,William Shippen, Robert Strettle, Philip 
Syng, Charles Willing, Phineas Bond, Richard Peters, Abraham 
Taylor, Thomas Bond, Thomas Hopkinson, William Plumstead, 
Joshua Maddox, Thomas White, William Coleman, Isaac Norris, 
Thomas Cadwalader, James Hamilton, Alexander Stedman, John 
Mifflin, Benjamin Chew, Edward Shippen, William Coxe, Thomas 
Mifflin, Jacob Duche, Lynford Lardner, and Amos Strettle. 
They were men of character and standing and learning ; or 
where, as with the greatest of them, mere scholarship was 
wanting, of masculine intelligence and pure, vigorous, American 
mother wit. They were of all ranks of life, of different means 



10 

and pursuits, and, what is most to be remembered, of different 
religious persuasions, and of course of the widest and most 
generous tolerance. I should be glad to analyse this list of 
benefactors, and trace as far as may be their individual influence ; 
but the limits which are properly prescribed to me forbid more 
than the most general views. One thing is very manifest, that the 
master spirit then, as the master spirit in every effort to do public 
good, from the hour when he landed penniless at Market Street 
wharf till the distant day when, at the end of almost a century, 
he was carried amid mourning crowds and tolling bells to his 
modest and almost forgotten grave, was Benjamin Franklin. His 
mind conceived and his energy achieved the first Philadelphia 
College, and supplied a deficiency which, almost without observa- 
tion, had been allowed to exist for the first seventy years after the 
settlement of the province. 

Of those seventy years, or at least of that portion of them 
which elapsed from William Penn's first departure till Dr. Frank- 
lin's arrival, I do not care to speak. Its history has yet to be 
honestly written. For my mind I confess, looking at the dreary 
continuity of pitiful squabbles, the melancholy end of the career 
of the founder of the Province, and the feebleness of those who in- 
herited his name and trust, it has no attractions. It seemed to illus- 
trate the futility of the wisest plans of political benevolence, without 
an adaptation under Providence of the materials to which to apply 
them. William Penn's scheme of social organization has no equal 
on the record of human devices — in wisdom, in tolerance, in supe- 
riority in every particular to the wretched speculative plans of the 
times in which he lived, and yet the instant his back was turned, 
and his personal influence withdrawn, all went into confusion and 
disorder. There seemed to be no principle of self-control or self- 
preservation. And the Charter, and. the Frame of government, and 
" The Laws agreed on in England," with their words of genuine elo- 
quence, which the student of rhetoric should learn by heart, and 
their lessons of political Avisdom, which the statesman of any time 
would do well to ponder on, were hung up in profitless rebuke of 
the state of discreditable perplexity which then ensued, and which 
more or less continued till the vigorous hand of revolution put a 
decisive end to it. Education, I mean high education, like every 
thing else, suffered in the scuffle. Seventy years rolled by in 
Pennsylvania, and no college, no plan of high scholarship was 
thought of; and when it did originate, it sprang up in the mind 
of one whose nativity was not of the soil. 



11 

Not that I mean to surrender our Franklin to New England ; 
for he was ours, Pliiladelphian in spirit and in truth, in enter- 
prize and loyal beneficence, from the day he came here a boy 
till the last hour of his wonderful existence. He belonged, 
too, to us graduates of this institution ; for to him do we 
mainly owe, not only its foundation, but its reconstruction when, 
at a later day, it had been grievously jarred and cracked by the 
convulsions of a civil war, and its attendant disturbances. And 
whilst I thus freely concede to Dr. Franklin the merit of the first 
suggestion and vigorous promotion of the College, we must not 
forget our peculiar obligations to others who laboured with him to 
the same end, and who laboured in spite of him in the cause of 
scholarship and classical education. Strange as it may seem to 
those who believe that a thorough knowledge of the ancient classics 
is the best foundation of a good style of idiomatic English writing, 
Dr. Franklin, who wrote as good and as pure English as any man 
ever wrote, was, if not opposed, at least indifferent to classical in- 
struction. Happily there was a strong counter-current, which even 
he could not turn back. Among the founders were such men as 
James Logan, the most accomplished and attractive man, after 
Penn, the colony produced, and Richard Peters and William Smith 
and Jacob Duche, all scholars in the best sense of the word, 
thorough men in their attainments, and who in time of need stood 
manfully by the good old cause of Greek and Latin with a faith- 
fulness that even we degenerate scholars of superficial times ought 
to thank them for. They did their good work in their day and 
generation, and we ought to remember it. They, or some of them, 
brought from the mother country and its universities scholarship 
that, transplanted here, produced good fruits. The University of 
Oxford conferred on two of these individuals her highest academic 
degrees ; and though doubtless the honour was chiefly designed as 
an acknowledgment of their staunch theology, we know that 
they well deserved it for higher and more substantial merits, for 
their thorough and accurate learning, and for the good they 
were doing in promoting good scholarship in these neglected 
colonies. To them we mainly owe the foundation of the Clas- 
sical Department of this University ; and for that, great is our 
debt of reverential gratitude. 

It is not, and so, gentlemen, you no doubt understand me, 
within the compass of my design to-night to trace the history of 
the college century. It has already been done by far abler 



12 

hands.* I simply mean to try, incidentally, to show, looking at 
certain pages of its annals, that we ought to be prouder of it 
than we are, and the rich honour it has shed upon the character 
of the community in which we live. 

Follow me then while I briefly unroll its catalogue of the forgotten 
dead and illustrious living, and see what it has done. Take as a 
starting point the first class of 1757, with its meagre number of 
seven graduates, five of whom rose to eminence and distinction, and 
end in 1812 and 1819, with the classes not much larger, with their 
three cabinet ministers, — this University producing two successive 
Secretaries of the Treasury, one of whom has made, and one of 
whom will, we his friends and fellow-citizens and fellow-graduates 
trust, make a clear and distinct mark on the history of our country. 
Its record is very full and very rich. 

The first name on our catalogue is Jacob Duch& — the next 
Francis Hopkinson. I am not here to play biographer, even 
to our illustrious fellow-graduates, but merely as I pass rapidly 
along to note their names and incidentally their destinies. And 
perhaps no two are in more striking contrast than these who lead 
the roll. Mr. Duche was a man, so says concurrent tradition, of 
brilliant abilities, of high scholarship and of attractive eloquence. 
He was a minister of the Established Church, and occupied in 
this then primitive community that position which her clergy, 
when men of moderation and kindly tolerance, always have occu- 
pied, of influence and respect. Here he had his education, and 
on this infant seminary he reflected as a teacher the honors 
he had won as a student. Here he lived, and here he was 
honoured, and here he might have died lamented and revered, for 
his high mental and moral qualities deserved them both ; but that 
when the day of patriotic trial came, let the warning enure for 
ever, he failed in the function which he should have filled. Fifteen 
years after he graduated the beginning of that trial came. Our 
first Philadelphia graduate was called by a unanimous vote to 
invoke, as a minister of God, a blessing on the first Federal 
Representation — the Continental Congress — which met here to 
deliberate on measures of resistance and redress. The tradition 
of that prayer still survives. It survives too in the recollection 
of one who was bound to the preacher by no ecclesiastical sym- 
pathy, for John Adams tells us that its eloquence melted to tears 
the sternest hearts among those who listened, and melted them 
only that in all the elements of resolution and endurance in their 

* Dr. George B. Wood's Historical Address. 
1* 



In 
O 

oppressed country's cause they might harden again. The prayer 
which thus ascended for fortitude, for courage, for loyalty, for 
affectionate fealty to the constitutions and privileges of America, 
as well defined then as now, brought down its fruits on all that 
heard it, save one, and he was the one who prayed. For when 
afterwards the sword was drawn, and actual trial came, he shrank 
from the test, and met with that reward which is the sure penalty 
on weakness like this. The rest of his melancholy story is soon 
told. At a later period he joined the enemy, not, I am proud to 
say, offensively, for Philadelphia never supplied from the ranks of 
her clergy confederates for blood and guides to carnage — but he 
fled and joined that sad pilgrimage of loyalists who tried to be- 
come pensioners on the reluctant pity of a nation which never, in 
those days at least, had sympathy with a drop of American blood, 
loyal or rebellious. There he dragged along a few weary years, 
but with the craving of a heart turned always to the home of his 
birth and education, he came back again, was generously and 
gently received and pardoned, and ended his days in peaceful 
insignificance amongst us. These were his errors, we may hope 
fully expiated. His honours, and of them we, his successors, with 
no sympathy with his faults, may well be proud, were high scholar- 
ship, and piety and elocpience ; and more than all, his was the historic 
honour, as I have said, that in the Mother Council of the nation — 
that august body which met in Carpenter's Hall, he was called to 
utter the first prayer and invoke the first blessing on the rising, 
struggling liberties of America. Two young men were his college 
mates, Francis Hopkinson and William Paca, and to their names 
is appended on our catalogue the distinction, the highest armorial- 
bearing American heraldry can boast, that they were " Signers of 
the Declaration of Independence." They too had their rich re- 
ward ; for next to the reverence of posterity which this one great 
act and a life of patriotic virtue secured, was that when, years 
later, the Federal Government was established, they were each 
selected by Washington to fill high judicial positions in his gift. 

In the classes of 1760 and 1761, I find two names, which in 
their military association have high thougli different distinction — 
one is Thomas Mifflin, a general in the continental service, and 
the first governor of Pennsylvania under the Constitution of 
1790 ; the other, Tench Tilghman, Washington's friend and con- 
fidential secretary, his cherished friend during the larger portion 
of the war. Governor Mifflin's contemporaneous reputation was 
peculiar. He was a brave, ardent and impetuous man, with no 



14 

steadiness of political principle to guide hiro, but with peculiar 
power of popular oratory which, in those times of excitement, gave 
him influence almost unequalled — an influence which neutralized 
the effects of his ill-regulated passions and strong personal preju- 
dices and prepossessions. No man of his times retained local 
popularity longer, or under greater disadvantages. He was one 
of the Philadelphia gentlemen who joined General Washington at 
Cambridge in 1775, and was at his side with fidelity that never 
wavered till the end of the campaign of '76; always active, full of 
vigour and of that spirit of gallant enterprise which always secures 
military applause. When in the winter or fall of 1776, Washing- 
ton retreated across the Delaware with scarcely a hope that resist- 
ance to the advancing enemy could by any good fortune be 
maintained — when the Commander-in-chief, he whose thoughts of 
joy or sorrow, of despondency or hope, rarely found vent in words, 
wrote to his brother that if something was not done " the game 
was nearly up," Mifflin, our brother graduate, was sent to arouse 
the slumbering energies of this community and persuade volunteers 
to the field. And never was high errand more successful. 
But for his success, (and is not this something to be very proud 
of) Washington must have fallen back, and neither Trenton 
nor Princeton would have been sacred names. Virginia and 
Massachusetts, as we all know, have had a standing quarrel as to 
whose eloquence the phrase belongs "We must fight," — but 
Pennsylvania has the fruitful honour of showing, when fighting- 
became a reality, how it was to be done. On the 26th November, 
1776, Mifflin writes to camp from Philadelphia : " I find my 
countrymen slumbering under the shade of peace, and in the full 
enjoyment of the sweets of commerce. I have been to the Com- 
mittee of Safety and addressed their passions. The Assembly 
meet to-night, and I will give them a lesson. To-morrow the 
city militia are to be reviewed, and they shall have a talk well- 
seasoned. The Council of Safety, I am just informed, open the 
campaign to-day by putting the principal tories in gaol." The 
appeal was like the sound of a trumpet. It could not keep Con- 
gress at its post ; but it aroused the spirit of Philadelphia, and at 
no period of the war was a finer spirit shown than here. Fifteen 
hundred volunteers (a great number for our then population,) 
marched to camp, and by their presence mainly, if not only, was 
Washington enabled to retrieve the broken fortune of the war. Our 
Philadelphia lawyer, our brother graduate, who had learned elo- 



15 

quence within these College walls, deserves no small share of 
honor for what he did then. 

The student of history knows that the rest of General Mifflin's 
career during the war was darkened by his share in the wretched 
conspiracy known as the Conway cabal, of which he was the 
master spirit, and whose object was to supersede Washington 
in his command — but we also know that Washington generously 
forgave him, and that by one of these accidents of picturesque 
retribution which adorn the page of history, it was into the hands 
of Mifflin, as President of Congress, that in 1783, when the war 
was over, he resigned his commission at Annapolis. With what a 
swelling heart, swelling with recollections and reproaches of the 
past, must Mifflin then have pronounced the memorable words, 
" The United States in Congress assembled receive with emotions 
too affecting for utterance the solemn resignation of the authorities 
under which you have led their troops with success through a 
perilous and doubtful war. For you, we address to Almighty God 
our inmost prayers that a life so beloved may be fostered with all 
His care, that your days may be as happy as they have been 
illustrious, and that He will finally give you that reward which the 
world cannot give." It was fitting such an invocation should 
issue from such lips. 

Tench Tilghman, also a graduate of 1761, was a man of different 
and in some elements of character of a higher grade. He belonged 
to the chivalry of the war. He was Washington's faithful confi- 
dential friend from first to last ; one of that glorious array, few 
but strong in virtue, whom Washington selected as his familiar 
friends, and in the strict sense of the word, his secretary. " He 
has been," Washington wrote in 1781, "a slave to the public and 
faithful to me." And who has higher praise than this ? In this 
same class of 1761, beside Colonel Tilghman, I find three other 
names of high local distinction in my own profession. Richard 
Peters, Alexander Wilcocks and Jasper Yeates, lawyers and 
judges of older and better days. 

And now, gentlemen, passing down the almost forgotten course 
of these remote times, I am startled, (one is very apt to be by any 
thing that makes him count his days,) by a name around which 
my own personal recollections cling. In the class of 1765, con- 
sisting only of seven individuals, I find the name of William 
White — "Bishop White" — the first Bishop of Pennsylvania. And 
here let me pause on this bright link which binds the living around 



16 

me with the illustrious dead whose names are historical, while in no 
spirit of common stereotyped laudation, (of which, Heaven knows, 
we have more than enough,) I strive to bring hack to those who 
remember, and to show to those who know it as of the past, the 
true merits of one of whom, in many respects, Philadelphia and 
the University has so many reasons to be proud. Bishop White 
will be by and by, if he is not already, a character of history. 
The patriarch of any form of Christian faith in our land belongs 
to history. Side by side with civilization as it advances over this 
continent, in some form, and often in various forms, is Religion 
guiding and softening and humanizing the mere physical improve- 
ment of civilized man. The Missionary follows close on the foot- 
steps of the adventurer. And it may be said, I hope without 
offence, that while other denominations of Christians may be more 
adventurous leaders of the missionary cause, no one is better cal- 
culated to win over the mind and conciliate the confidence of 
mankind in a higher state of civilization than that form known 
as the Church of England. Its moderation, the tolerant spirit 
that is breathed through its services when administered in true 
simplicity, (and let us hope their simple and severe beauty may 
never be disguised by extravagant or grotesque ceremonial,) and 
which seems to claim kind brotherhood not merely with those of 
its own communion, but in the tolerant language of its liturgy, 
with "all who profess and call themselves Christians," — all seem 
to promise vast and increasing and beneficent progress in a land 
like ours, where intolerance and sectarian exclusiveness of any 
kind are sure to meet fatal rebuke. And if this be so, then emi- 
nently will he be entitled to a high and prominent place in our 
historic gallery, who may be justly said, if not to have planted the 
Church here, certainly to have raised and sustained it when 
withered by the cruel, unnatural neglect of the Mother Church 
in Great Britain, and prostrated by the storm of civil war. Well 
did he deserve the gratitude of the Church — nearly as well did he 
deserve the gratitude of the country. 

There are few things in our civil history more curious and 
characteristic than the foundation of the Episcopate in this country 
after the Revolutionary war : its means, its men, and its results. A 
Boston Puritan, nurtured in detestation of prelacy, was an active 
agent in effecting the consecration of the first two American 
Bishops. Mr. Adams, the American minister in London, carried 
the candidates to Lambeth, introduced them to the palace of the 
Primate, and always looked back, heterodox, as in most respects 



17 

he was thought to be, to his agency on this occasion with pride and 
pleasure. He was proud, and well he might be, to carry such a 
man as our Philadelphia clergyman to any court, to any palace, whe- 
ther of king or prelate. He could point to him as a man not merely 
of piety and devotion to what he considered true ecclesiastical 
principles, but as one of the few among the Episcopal clergy 
hereabouts, who, in the hour of trial, had been true to his coun- 
try's cause. Doctor White, throughout the Revolution, was 
always resolutely American. No Anglicanism ever tainted his 
high spirit — no spurious sentimentalism ever warped his faith 
to his native home. Most happily, too, the gentle, moderate 
spirit of the American candidate was met by his ecclesiastical 
superiors abroad in a temper as gentle and considerate. The 
government was in the hands of wise and tolerant men. Mr. 
Pitt was minister, and the echoes of his great father's voice, 
warning Bishops and Peers against injustice to America, had 
not died out of his memory. The Primate was a man of 
cool judgment and extreme caution. He saved the American 
Church from no slight danger, by postponing or refusing the 
consecration of one, who, before Sir Guy Carleton had eva- 
cuated New York, had hurried from the British camp across 
the Atlantic to receive, as he hoped, the mitre, as a reward for 
hostility to the American cause. The wisdom of the Ministry, 
and the cool judgment of the ecclesiastical authorities, hesitated 
on the claim, and at last placed that mitre on the head of one who 
but the day before had been a rebel, but who, the struggle being 
over, was, in their gentle judgment, none the less worthy because 
he had been loyal to his native country's cause. Such was the 
high honour, and few can boast of higher ones, that our Philadel- 
phia graduate won. 

And then the rest of his life, as we knew it here in Philadel- 
phia ! What a model of a venerable Bishop — what a model of a 
Christian gentleman, with every accomplishment and attraction 
brightening around him — so gentle, so moderate, so resolute, 
and so tolerant. In his social relations, doing his d»uty as a 
citizen; never obtruding his political opinions, which were of that 
antique, historical school called Federal, which so many are 
anxious to disavow, but never faltering in his political fidelity, 
thinking it a duty not a sin to vote. When danger and pestilence 
came, here was he at his post. When the appeal was made to 
him to come forward and lend his venerable name for the promo- 
tion of any object of general beneficence, he answered the appeal 

2 



18 

promptly and generously. He was always the good citizen ; and, 
at last, when his long career was over, there was no jar or dis- 
cord in the universal sorrow which broke forth, like a gentle 
dirge, over the grave of one who had been, in every relation of 
life, personal and official, so singularly blameless. He, too, be- 
longs to us. 

In the classes, within the twenty years next succeeding, I find a 
cluster of names of high local distinction in my own profession, but 
who have left little else, with all their living influence, than the 
mere lawyer's transient and traditionary fame. They are, Edward 
Tilghman, as a lawyer, the greatest of them all ; Moses Levy, 
Samuel Sitgreaves, Jonathan W. Condy, and Joseph Hopkinson. 
The last of these eminent men lives in our fresh remembrance ; 
whilst of the first a beautiful memorial is extant, from the pen of 
a living lawyer, well worth careful study.* 

In the class of 1789 appears the name of the oldest living 
graduate of this University, whose attendance here and partici- 
pation in these ceremonies we should have been proud, and almost 
hoped to have. I refer to Doctor Samuel Miller, now Emeritus 
Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the Theological Seminary 
at Princeton ; an eminent, a learned and accomplished man ; who, 
through a long life, both within and aside from his sacred pro- 
fession, has shed bright lustre on the literature of our country. 
Here he was educated ; and hither, at the expiration of more than 
half a century, to his Alma Mater, he looks back with intense 
affection. There is something so earnest and cordial in Dr. Mil- 
ler's expression of feeling to this Institution, that I am tempted 
to quote a single paragraph from his letter to your committee. 

" It is just sixty years," he writes, " since the University of 
Pennsylvania conferred on me my first literary honours. Nor is 
this all I have to acknowledge at her hands. More than twenty 
years afterwards, not unmindful of her humble son, she, unso- 
licited, conferred upon me a high professional honour, for which 
I have ever felt deeply thankful. f Yet more; beside these per- 

* I allude to Mr. Binney's beautiful biography of Edward Tilghman in 
Professor Vethake's Supplement to the Encyclopedia Americana. 

f The degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred on Dr. Miller in 1813. 

I may here note the extreme good sense and tolerant spirit which has always 
seemed to guide the Trustees in the distribution of the Academical honours, 
especially the Doctorates of Divinity. In a century, the College has bestowed 
but nineteen degrees of L.L. D., and the list, which I take from the catalogue, 
shows how highly the distinction has been prized by those who have bestowed 



19 

sonal obligations, I cannot help calling to mind on this occasion, 
so well adapted to revive the impressions of the past, that three 
beloved brothers, long since deceased, were in succession sharers 
with myself in the favours of this honoured parent. You will 
readily believe me, then, when I say that I regard the University 
of Pennsylvania with the deepest filial and grateful interest ; 
and that it would give me more pleasure than I can express to 
be present and unite with you in your literary celebration, but 
being now in the 80th year of my age, and feeling the heavy and 
growing pressure of an old man's infirmities, I am compelled to 
forego it." 

Would that every graduate of this University thought of it 
with the affectionate reverence that glows in this venerable man's 
breast. Then, indeed, would it be strong in the grateful memo- 
ries of its children. Of Dr. Miller's eminence in his sacred 
function, and within the religious communion to which he be- 
longs, it would be presumptuous for me to speak. It is best 
shown by the confidence for thirty years reposed in him by one 
of the most learned theological institutions in our country. But 
he has literary reputation aside from his profession. His Retro- 
spect of the 18th Century was a work which, embodying a novel 
and original idea, made at the time of its publication a strong 
impression on this and the other side of the Atlantic, and showed 
its author to be a thorough and accomplished scholar ; whilst his 
works of controversial theology and ecclesiastical biography at- 
test his singular ability in other and more technical branches of 
knowledge. His fame too is part of our honour. 

Finding myself within the circle of the living, I am admonished 
by every instinct of good taste to pause, and no farther prolong, 
at the expense of your kind patience, the catalogue of our illus- 
trious brethren. Among the living, I could easily find many of 
whose fame we might well be proud, and whom, by a word of just 
appreciation, I should be glad to win back to their allegiance here ; 

it. The names are :— -George Washington, (1783) ; Charles Thomson, (1784) ; 
Chief Justice McKean, (1785), Francis Hopkinson, Chief Justice Shippen, 
Judge Wilson, (1790), Chief Justice Tilghman, (1807), Rufus King, Chief 
Justice Marshall, Judge Washington, (1825), Judge Gaston, Chancellor Kent, 
Doctor Patterson, the elder, Judge Charles Smith, Chief Justice Ambrose 
Spencer, (1819), General Lafayette, (1825); Judge Peters, (1827), Samuel 
L. Southard, (1832) ; Chief Justice Gibson, (1838). 

In 1780, the degree of A. M. was, it seems, conferred on " Thomas Paine," 
then known only as a political writer. 



20 

but content -with an earnest commemoration of the dead, I leave, 
with the single exception I have made, the living without a word. 

Nor have I allowed myself time to speak of the distinguished 
men, who have been connected, in one way or another, either as 
professors or tutors, for in former times there were tutors as 
well as professors, with the academical department. 

Qf these, this much I venture to assert, that few collegiate 
institutions can exhibit a stronger array of names in past times 
than we can. The names of Smith, and Ewing, and Allison, and 
Rittenhouse, and Kinnersley, and Davidson, and Charles Thom- 
son, and Patterson, and many others, sufficiently illustrate this. 
And as my mind runs over the long list of distinguished teachers 
connected with this Institution, it rests on one, not very long 
since passed from among us, of whom I and every one who, as a 
pupil, knew him, can never speak but with affectionate regard. 
He was perhaps not an illustrious man in one sense of the word, 
but he was a true and faithful man in an unpretending and labo- 
rious function. If there be any one here of the classes from 1806 
to 1828, they will hardly need to hear me say I refer to James 
G. Thomson, for twenty-two years Professor of Languages— the 
"severe professor," as he was represented to the uninitiated to be, 
the kindest and truest and most cordial friend, as he was soon 
found out to be, the student ever had. He was one of those men 
who thought of little but Latin and Greek — of dialects and mea- 
sures, and syntax and prosody ; but who was there of the hundreds 
he instructed, who ever murmured at petulance or injustice, and 
didn't think with deep regret of how much more, at the hands of 
such a teacher, he might have learned. I do not exaggerate, for 
I am sure there are many of my contemporaries will respond 
heartily when I say, that no one — not the laziest of the class, and 
in my day there were certainly some very lazy students — ever 
thought of Professor Thomson without deep self-reproach if he 
had ever offended him, and peculiar pride when he had earned 
his praise. 

With the past I have now done. May I be pardoned if I say a 
single word of hope and confidence for the future. There is no 
use of disguising that the cause of liberal and accomplished edu- 
cation here is in the hands of this University. There can be no 
substitute for the processes of education which an institution like 
this alone has in its power to apply. They are processes of high 
mental culture. Processes which take the student from the lower 
level of what is known as mere schooling and rudimental learning, 



21 

and elevate him into association with bright and pure lights 
that burn above — which make him the accomplished scholar, and 
send him into this world of work, with the armour of his mind not 
only rivetted, but polished and shining like the scholar knight's in 
the Spanish romance of chivalry, all over bright moons and stars. 
I am very sure I truly represent those whose organ to-night I am, 
when I say that we, the Alumni, look to the future of the Uni- 
versity, whose past has been such as I have attempted to describe, 
with deep and earnest solicitude. Time has not yet so far rolled 
by as to allow us to forget the wants and cravings of our College 
days; or of that time, much more valuable, when academical dis- 
cipline and control being at an end, we were left to our own 
unassisted guidance. Of the administration of the College, and 
its course of instruction within its regular term, it would be pre- 
sumptuous for me to speak. No man holds in this community a 
higher or more enviable position than those to whom this trust is 
delegated. They have vast opportunity of extensive service, in 
the high culture of the scholars of our community. They are 
placed beyond all rivalry; for common schools, and private schools, 
and high schools, doing vast service in their respective spheres, 
and every hour satisfies me more and more of their usefulness, 
are in no competition with what a University ought to be. So 
far from it, they may be, and ought to be, identical in aim ; and it 
is a most pleasing thing to see that the individual whom I am 
proud to call a friend, a fellow graduate and brother lawyer, who 
of late years, has been most prominently useful in the cause of 
common school education, is a Trustee of this University, and 
faithful and earnest in both his trusts.* So may it be with the 
Professors of the University — most especially with its presiding 
officer. His is the duty, in the best sense of the word, to popu- 
larise the Institution, to mingle with the masses of the com- 
munity, the schools and the scholars, and most of all, with that 
^inestimable, but slighted class, the school masters, who labour 
thanklessly, and who would be most proud to see their boys wel- 
comed within college halls, and striving with kind encouragement 
for college honours. Is it not a noble function in this commu- 

o 

nity — .what nobler one can any one desire than to be an agent of 
good like this ? 

As to what might be done in the enlargement of the Institution 

* George M. Wharton, Esq., for many years President of the Controllers of 
the Public Schools— an Alumnus of 1823. The Secretary of the Trustees, 
Mr. George Emlen, is also active in the common school cause. 



22 

in relation to its graduates, and especially to those who have just 
entered on the study of their professions, for College guardianship 
ought not to end with its first degrees, the Alumni have a most 
direct interest. There was a time within my memory when an 
attempt was made to supply this deficiency by the institution of 
another faculty, whose instruction was not to be compulsory, and 
when, for causes not at all inherent, it failed. The question is 
now presented, cannot such an extension of a scheme of education 
be revived under better auspices, and with greater chances — and 
if it can, what should be its basis and extent ? To this, the atten- 
tion of the Alumni has, in a general way been directed, and 
meditating on this, there are some results, which, in the name of 
the graduates, I will frankly and respectfully state, trusting that 
they may receive the attention to which the motive in which they 
originate entitles them. That motive is an unaffected desire to 
elevate the intellectual character of this community, to raise the 
standard of literary and professional accomplishment, to do good 
to the University, and widen, in a new direction, and without the 
drain of a dollar of its resources, its capacity for usefulness. 

I speak of the standard of professional accomplishment, and in 
doing so, my mind naturally and directly turns to my own pro- 
fession, which, every where but here, is considered as a branch of 
University education. I am well aware of the plausible objections 
to any attempt thus to educate in the science of the law, but they 
are really objections to what no one dreams of recommending, 
instructions in this mode alone. All that is desired, and as I have 
said, every University but this supplies it, is that beside the mode 
of office study, which is now alone relied on, something like sys- 
tematic oral instruction should be afforded. Surely no one, not 
the most abstracted and intense student that ever struggled on 
through the din and distraction of a practising lawyer's office, would 
be the worse for listening, at the end of the day, or twice, or once 
a week, from the lips of a competent, practical teacher, and none 
other would be thought of, to a systematic exposition of the sci- 
ence of the local law. How many a perplexity, which, originating 
in inexperience, haunts the brain of the mature student, might be 
removed by a single opportune Ayord from a teacher's lips. Let 
any one recall the hours of indolent or devoted study which he 
has had, and say whether it would not have been a refreshment, 
and an advantage too, to have heard the law talked over and 
explained and illustrated. And this, and little else would an 
expert and practical teacher attempt, is all that is proposed. Those 



23 

who object to law professorships and law lectures forget that 
Blackstone was a law professor at a University, and Blackstone's 
Commentaries, law lectures. By such instruction, no lawyer's 
office would be depopulated, the same hands would be at work to 
copy papers, the same legs to run errands. The vested rights of 
the Bar in their young men would not be impaired. Not even 
ancient habit, which in legal education has, in my poor judgment, 
but most absurdly revered, would be infringed. The sacred routine 
of sitting round a front office table, the student's feet, generally 
such are the graces which are taught, where his head ought to be, 
all talking over the gossip of the day, would not be violated, and 
yet a little more might be learned under restraints that could not 
be disregarded, and the student might the better appreciate that 
it is something like a science which he is trying to master. 

I am here but to hint at our wants in this respect. The filling 
up and maturing the plan, nay more, the selection of the indi- 
vidual to discharge this most important trust, belong to others, 
with whose functions we have no right or wish to meddle. It 
certainly, however, would not "puzzle a Philadelphia lawyer" 
long to find one worthy to fill it, from the ranks of our own 
Alumni, a learned jurist, elevated by judicial position above 
the strife and beyond the exigencies of his profession, and yet in 
every sense a practical lawyer, who would be proud, I hope, and 
competent, I am sure, to teach law as a science to those who, I 
am equally sure, would be most grateful to learn it from him.* 

May we not, looking to other pursuits of learned life, ask for 
something more ? To the scientific department of this University 
I am glad to pay, for concurrent testimony satisfies me it is de- 
served, a high tribute of confidence and respect, but will any one 
pretend to say that the course of scientific instruction might 
not be advantageously extended? I feel how incompetent I 
am even to make suggestions on matters like this. But there 
are wants in this respect which are palpable. Twice within the 
last eighteen months have I been applied to from a distance, to 
know if there was not attached to this University a school or pro- 
fessorship or lectureship on Civil Engineering, especially as ap- 
plied to mineral explorations. Naturally the student's inquiry is 
turned to Pennsylvania, the great mineral State of the Union, 
richer this moment, in healthy mineral resources, I mean those that 
make men rich by labor, than all California, and it is with mor- 

* My professional friends will, I am sure, understand that I allude to Judge 
Sharswood, an Alumnus of 1828. 



24 

tification that we have had to answer that we do not in our Uni- 
versity, or any where else hereabouts, teach such things, and the 
student must go, and there is no doubt he has gone, to Cam- 
bridge — to Massachusetts, the inside of whose soil is not less 
barren than its surface, — to Massachusetts, which you might per- 
forate from Cape Cod to the Hudson, and not find a stone richer 
than Quincy granite, but where the munificent liberality, the 
steady loyalty of her public spirited men endows scientific lecture- 
ships and professorships, and makes Universities worthy of the 
name. Let any one go to the Franklin Institute or Academy of 
Natural Science, of this city, and he will see how strong and 
prevalent the craving for scientific instruction is. Let any one 
recall the course of popular lectures delivered very many years 
ago in this University, on Natural Philosophy, by one (he is 
present, and will excuse the sincere compliment) whose talent for 
experimental lecturing and graceful elocution has rarely been 
surpassed. Nay, let any one visit the comparatively humble and 
unknown laboratory and school of private instruction in practical 
science of one of our own graduates, and watch the success of 
private unassisted tuition, and he cannot doubt the inestimable 
good that might be done in elevating Philadelphia scientific fame, 
if its seminary of varied learning once met and tried to satisfy the 
wants I have spoken of.* 

May we not ask something still more? Would it be an in- 
ordinate boon to alloAv us, remember I am speaking for the 
graduates, for the under-graduates have thorough instruction, 
if we needed, and public taste would support it, a Lecture- 
ship or Professorship of History, and especially of American his- 
tory. On this point there are many who feel strongly and 
anxiously. Ignorance of history — deep, dark ignorance of our 
own history is the crying intellectual defect of our country, and 
especially so of this community. In other places it is not so. 
In Boston — for thither I am compelled to go too often for ex- 
ample of defects supplied — in Boston the individual whose life 
has been devoted to the illustration of our Annals — who has 
earned his fame as a teacher of American history, has made that 
peculiar department the sure and firm stepping stone to the 
highest literary honour in the Western World — the President of 
Harvard University. A tutor in the same college, gaining fame 

* Dr. .Robert M. Patterson formerly delivered popular courses on Natural 
Philosophy, and Professor James C. Booth's private school of Arts is well 
known to our men of science. 



25 

by writing American history, has attained and reflected credit on 
the highest diplomatic honour in the nation's gift. American 
history has students, and teachers, and patrons in New England 
— why not in Pennsylvania ? In Pennsylvania, one page of whose 
revolutionary history has more interest in all that should warm 
an American heart, than volumes of New England, — in Philadel- 
phia, whose neighbourhood of fifty miles can count more battle- 
fields than half the confederacy beside — in Philadelphia, whose 
classic halls, for we can boast one more than Boston, were not 
then mere "cradles of liberty," but the places where liberty 
learned to walk and speak for herself — here no one seems willing 
on these subjects to read, to learn, to teach. We study every 
thing but this. We have lectures on every conceivable alien 
topic. We see all round us youthful and mature intelligence 
wasting itself on studies the most obsolete and unfruitful, and 
when the simplest question is asked as to what affects ourselves, 
our lessons of the recent past, that which is to influence our 
homely destinies and those of our children — when such questions 
are asked, and such studies recommended, the mind even of the 
American student turns away in ill-disguised disgust or indiffer- 
ence, and if it does not glory, at least, is not ashamed of its pre- 
ference for alien studies.* 

It may too be suggested that the mere clearing up of ignorance 
on this point, must of necessity have high and direct moral influ- 
ence, on the imagination, and through it on the heart of American 
men and women too. Who reads an American book ? is a question 
which has a new and painful significance. It is not easy to 
speak earnest truth on this matter of homely history, and escape 
the imputation of vulgar and declamatory national self-com- 
placency. Yet no one can think seriously on what in the way of 
study and moral culture one sees around him, without a sense 
of the truth of what I hint at. Go into any intelligent company 
in this city, and enquire of those who adorn it, not what they 
know, but how they feel, and there is but one response. We 
know nothing, and of course we care nothing about American 
history. Go to the meditative student's Library rich with the 
spoils of every other clime and every other time than ours. He 
will turn a listless ear if you talk to him of the Continental Con- 
gress, or even of some romantic incident of Colonial or Revolu- 

* I am bound in justice here to say, that Professor Reed's course of instruc- 
tion in American Constitutional History to the under-graduates, is very tho- 
rough and complete, as much so as any in the country. 



26 

tionary story, while his eye will brighten and his tongue be fluent 
if you touch some key of alien sentimentalism. Go ask the mer- 
chant, the intelligent, well educated merchant, what were known 
as "the enumerated articles," or the Writs of Assistance, or the 
Acts of Trade, out of which the Revolution began, and he will 
hardly be ashamed to say be never heard of them. Enquire of 
the practising lawyer of our own time, for I am sorry to think 
the past were better, who has his Blackstone at his finger ends, 
if he has ever studied the history of American constitutional law, 
and he will not blush to say he has not. Nay further — go, I will 
not say to the Churches of the land, for they are beyond my 
criticism, but look at the other means, especially in the form of 
periodical publications, by which ecclesiastical information of one 
sort or another is diffused to purify or to poison the American mind, 
turn over their leaves and detect, if you can, one thought or 
allusion kindred to the true history of American Christianity. 
Nay, further, see how much there is at which the American heart 
if it be loyal, revolts at as adverse to the cause and principles 
for which our fathers bled, and what I mourn over will be too 
apparent to be disputed. 

Let me not for a moment be understood as urging any thing 
like exclusiveness, even in behalf of domestic history. I ask but 
a small share of the American student's mind. I would have 
him thoroughly taught in the history of his own country, as a 
mode of enabling him to think rightly on that of other nations- 
All should be ancillary to the master principles at home, and 
impregnating his mind thoroughly with such elements of know- 
ledge, I would give as large latitude to taste as he desired. There 
would be no danger then, there would be no Grallicised or Angli- 
cised « Young America" then, there would be no translated senti- 
mentalism, with its spurious martyrology; the student would 
judge foreign politics, and foreign theology, and foreign opinions 
of the past and present, by the true standard, which proper edu- 
cation had fixed in his American heart. He would then read a 
Tory book with no risk of his imagination being run away with 
by obsolete phantoms of forgotten times and exploded prac- 
tices. He may glean from it much to humanize and chasten 
the rough extravagance which our simple freedom is apt to en- 
courage, and yet keep his republican loyalty pure, lie may 
read a Radical book, and gathering from it knowledge of the true 
condition of the wretched masses abroad, on which while conserv- 
ative men are too apt to shut their eyes — what is called Kadi- 



27 

calism has thrown so much light — he will yet be safe, and prouder 
the more he reads than ever that he, the American citizen, stands 
safe in the clear sun-light of rational, constitutional liberty, on 
ground not burrowed beneath his feet by starving down-trodden 
poverty, or shadowed by political or ecclesiastical structures that 
are fast tottering to their fall. 

And now, gentlemen, I have done. The words of consolatory 
truth, of pride in the past, and hope for the future, are now 
spoken. My appeal has been for Philadelphia, "dear Philadel- 
phia" — for education in its highest form in Philadelphia. It is 
an appeal which I hope may reach the ancient heart of this 
University, the guardian after all of high education amongst us. 
It and its kindred institutions hereabouts, ought to feel they are 
fit for something better than respectable decrepitude. There 
ought to be immortal youth always coursing in its veins, though 
a century's snows are upon its brow. There is vast capacity for 
extended usefulness which yet is undeveloped. The graduates 
come back to her feet, and ask her to arouse and be more than 
herself again. The University of Pennsylvania ought to be and 
may yet be made to be what its name imports — a University for 
Pennsylvania. But in order that it should be so, Philadelphia 
must be true to herself and her institutions. There must be no 
disloyalty — the voice of disparagement must cease — there must 
be mutual confidence and pride in each other, and for each other 
— a rally round our institutions and our men ; and then Phila- 
delphia, proud of herself as she has a right to be, proud of 
her scholars, her men of high literature and science, reared round 
her own hearth, and with the guidance of her own teachers, may 
take and keep the stand which her ancient fame once gave her, 
fearless in the strength of manly self-complacency of any rivalry, 
let it come whence it may. 

And if, graduates of the University, any word of man shall give 
the slightest impulse to your loyalty, to the institutions of our 
home, to this venerable College, to the cause of domestic educa- 
tion, it will be a reward beyond all price. It will be honour 
enough to me to feel that the dawn of a new century has been 
heralded by the fire which you and I have tried to-night to kindle. 



APPENDIX 



The Commemoration of the first Centennial Anniversary of the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania, having begun with the public oration before the 
Society of the Alumni, by William B. Reed, Esq., on the evening of the 
anniversary day, November the 13th, was continued on the day following 
by a Dinner of the Graduates at the Columbia House. At the hour 
appointed, a large concourse of Graduates met in the parlour of the Hotel, 
and proceeded to the dining-room, under the direction of the Committee 
of Arrangement, viz: — Prof. James C Booth, Charles E. Lex, H. G. 
Jones, Jr., and J. B. Gest, Esqrs., Dr. E. E. Wilson, H. Wharton, Esq., 
and Mr. W. Arthur Jackson. 

The Hon. Henry D. Gilpin presided, assisted by the Hon. Thomas M. 
Pettit, the Hon. George Sharswood, and George M. Wharton, Esq. 

The invited guests present were the Provost and Faculty of Arts, and 
the Hon. Robert J. Walker, late Secretary of the Treasury, a graduate of 
the class of 1819. Mr. Walker occupied a place on the right of his class- 
mate, the President of the day, and by the side of Professor Reed, the 
President of the Society of the Alumni. On the left were the Provost and 
members of the Faculty, Thomas Biddle, Esq., the senior resident graduate, 
a member of the class of 1791, and William B. Reed, Esq., the orator of 
the Society of the Alumni. 

The Rev. Dr. Ludlow (the Provost) was called upon by the President to 
invoke a blessing, after which the festivities commenced. 

After the removal of the cloth, Hon. Henry D. Gilpin prefaced the 
Regular Toasts with remarks to the following effect : 

Gentlemen ! Alumni of the University of Pennsylvania ! _ Friends 
bound together by a tie of communion, awakening warm sympathies in all 
our hearts ! For the first time we assemble together to indulge those 
sympathies, protected, as it were, by the unseen influence of that common 
mother, whose children we are proud to acknowledge ourselves to be. How 
many of us — long separated — have again and again desired, as year followed 
year, that, by such a meeting as this, we should bring back the memory of 
days that are cheerful and pleasant to the heart ! My words cannot more 
than half express my own emotions, when I find myself thus addressing 
those who can claim a fellowship with each other, more strong, perhaps, than 
any other that can spring from the accidental associations of our lives. 
May this be but the beginning of these meetings, which shall hereafter 
keep, through long future years, in the hearts of her children, the cherished 
memory that they have been students in the University of Pennsylvania. 
When I see by my side a friend— (Hon. Robert J. Walker,) come from 



30 

afar to be with us this day — -a fellow-member of the class of 1819 — in 
whom the bustle of the world for thirty years since past, and the busy 
occupations of a life adorned with honours among the highest his country 
can confer, have never checked nor impaired the generous friendship formed 
in College halls ; when I know myself to be sensible to a true pleasure, in 
seeing among the honoured guests who have joined our festivities some 
who, as professors, still retain all the affection and respect which they 
gained in Collegiate days some time passed by ; when I witness as a guest, 
full of generous and unabated sympathy, one, who we had hoped would 
have consented to preside over this day's ceremonies — the oldest graduate 
of the University living in Philadelphia — (Mr. Thomas Biddle, of the class 
of 1791,) — and one, too, who has well repaid his debt of youthful grati- 
tude to her, by constant efforts to further her progress and prosperity — 
with these evidences around me, I cannot fail to appreciate the full strength 
of that desire which has induced us this day to meet together ; I can indulge 
with confidence the wish and the belief common to us all, that it may con- 
tinue henceforth, a good and honoured custom for many an Anniversary 
yet to come. 

Nor are these the only motives for such a wish ; other causes and inci- 
dents not a few, are not wanting, that might make us proud to be recog- 
nized as Alumni of the University of Pennsylvania ; on them, however, I 
need not dwell. I should but feebly repeat the narrative, so eloquent 
and so true, which sketched for us last evening, her collegiate annals, and 
the story of many of the most brilliant of her sons. Hoping, then, gentle- 
men, that we but lead the way for successive votaries to offer, at the same 
shrine, their tribute of grateful and cherished recollections, I offer as the 
first sentiment of the day : 

1. Our Alma Mater. — May each succeeding century of her existence 
add to the fame and increase the number of children of whom she need 
not be ashamed. 

2. The Memory of Benjamin Franklin. — The Founder of the College. 
8. The Society of the Alumni. — A youthful scion planted on ancient 

ground — may it continue to flourish, and each year add to the beauty and 
usefulness of the parent stock. 

This toast was responded to by Professor Henry Reed, who said — 
Mr. President and fellow Alumni : — The faces of those around me tell 
me that as' President of the Society of the Alumni, I am looked to for a 
response. Permit me to say that it is with the most unaffected surprise, 
that I find myself thus called on. The duty takes me truly unawares, 
because I had in all my thoughts identified this large gathering of gra- 
duates, which now pays tribute to that Society, with the Society itself. I 
am not quite entitled to put in the plea of that worn out formula, being 
"unused to public speaking;" but in all sincerity, I may say that this is 
indeed a novel position for one, whose daily habit of speech is the tranquil, 
academic discourse, which belongs to a Professor's life. I am sure, how- 
ever, of your indulgence, when I remind you how great is the contrast 
between the retirement in our studious citadels, and such a dazzling array 
as that which now meets my eye. Besides the fraternal feeling which 
inspires us all, bringing and binding us together, there are other thoughts 
and emotions which crowd into my mind, when I look around me here. I 
behold a throng of familiar faces of those, in the formation of whose cha- 



31 

racters and the discipline of whose minds, it is the pride of my life to know- 
that I hare had a share. However humble that share may have been, it 
is ground for genuine pride and a right rejoicing, when I look at such a 
body of men as I have seen, year after year, moving forward from their 
College training, and taking their stations in society to bear their part in 
the duties of life. This is a tempting topic that I must not trust myself 
with, and, Mr. President, let me warn you that when, on an occasion like 
this, you call a Professor to a speech, there is much peril of his words 
wandering away from appropriate response— under an impulse, such as is 
strong upon me now — the impulse of boasting of my " boys." One fact, 
with regard to the Society of the Alumni, I crave to state to this assem- 
blage, and that is, that it had its origin with the graduates of recent years. 
The movement has come from the right quarter — the generous ardour of 
the young; and how beautifully that spirit has been responded to by the 
prompt sympathy and the cordial fellowship of the older graduates ! For 
while I see before me, the younger generations of Alumni, by my side I 
look to my venerable friend, (Mr. Thomas Biddle,) a graduate cf near 
sixty years standing. Thus we have brought threescore years together — 
sons and fathers — successive generations, animated with the one enduring 
sentiment of academical brotherhood. Let me also claim for our young 
Society, the merit of good service in producing the first general catalogue, 
and thus teaching us our own neglected ancestral strength, by giving 
familiarity with the names of the worthies, who adorn our annals. We 
have moreover proclaimed to this community, that the glory of a hundred 
years is now on the brow of the University, and we have shown that her 
children are ready to gather at her feet, bringing with them the tribute of 
pleasant memories — of filial piety, and of earnest and affectionate loyalty. 
i pray you to accept the thanks of the Society of the Alumni. 

A. The oldest living Graduate. — Samuel Miller, D.D., of Princeton. — 
A model for imitation to bis younger brethren, proving by his life and 
conversation that gray hairs are a crown of glory, when found in the paths 
of mctitude. 

When this toast was read, H. Gr. Jones, Jr. Esq., arose and said, that 
the Committee had invited Dr. Miller to attend both the oration and dinner, 
but his advanced age and the distance at which he resided, rendered his 
attendance impossible. The following letter, with the accompanying senti- 
ment from Dr. Miller, was then read by Mr. Jones : 

Princeton, Nov. 5th, 1849. 

( I ENTLEMEN : — I received your letter of Oct. 30th, inviting me to attend 
the address of Wm. B. Heed, Esq., to the Alumni of the University of 
Pennsylvania, on the evening of the 13th inst., and the Centenary Dinner 
of the Graduates on the next evening. These occasions are both so attract 
tivo, that the thought of declining an attendance upon them, gives me pain. 
Mr. Reed is one of those orators of whom I think it may be said, "Nil 
tetigit quod non ornavit." I shall expect an address from him to be re- 
plete with entertainment and instruction ; and with respect to the Cente- 
nary Festival, of which you speak, I know of few things that would give 
me more heartfelt pleasure than meeting my beloved fellow Alumni, and 
especially invoking the blessing of Heaven on them and their Alma 
Mater. 



32 

But it is entirely out of the question. At the age of more than eighty 
years, I find myself so feeble — so nervous, and so unfit to appear in public 
and festive assemblies, especially at night, that I must at once deny 
myself the pleasure of attending on the occasion to which you so kindly 
invite me. May the best blessings of Heaven rest upon you all ! May 
the expected exercises prove as richly delightful and useful as the best 
wishes of the warmest friends of our Alma Mater could desire. 
I am, gentlemen, with cordial respect, 

Your fellow Alumnus, 

SAM'L MILLER. 

P. S. — You will perceive that I employ the pen of another in this com- 
munication. My own right hand is beginning to " forget her cunning." 

By Rev. Dr. Miller. — Education. — The highest and best possible to 
every member of the community ; but education ever adorned and sancti- 
fied by true Religion, which alone can make it a safe pledge of virtue, 
order, social strength, and genuine freedom. 

In addition to the above, the Committee received the following letter 
from Dr. Miller last June, when it was contemplated to have the celebra- 
tion in July, but which was deferred on account of the epidemic which then 
prevailed in our city. 

Princeton, June 22(1, 1849. 

Gentlemen : — I had the honor of receiving, a few days ago, your polite 
note, announcing to me the approaching " Second Annual Dinner of the 
Graduates of the University of Pennsylvania," and inviting me as one of 
your number to attend and take part in that interesting festival. It is just 
sixty years, since that University — my beloved and venerated Alma Mater, 
conferred upon me my first literary honors. Nor is this all I have to acknow- 
ledge at her hands. More than twenty years afterwards, not unmindful of 
her humble son, she, unsolicited, conferred upon me a higher professional 
degree, for which I have ever felt deeply thankful. Yet more, besides these 
personal obligations, I cannot help calling to mind on this occasion, so well 
adapted to revive the impressions of the past, that three beloved brothers, 
long since deceased, were in succession, sharers with myself in the favors 
of this honored parent. You will readily believe me, then, when I say, 
that I regard the University of Pennsylvania with the deepest filial and 
grateful interest ; and that it would give me more pleasure than I can 
express to be present with you, and to unite in the literary feast which you 
have announced ; but being now in the eightieth year of my age, and feel- 
ing the heavy and growing pressure of the infirmities which usually attend 
that period of life, I am impelled to avoid all ceremonious meetings and 
public assemblies of every kind. 

The great advantage of such anniversary celebrations is that they afford 
opportunities of cherishing and expressing sentiments favorable to the best 
interests of society and of mankind, and especially of uniting in plans and 
counsels subservient to the honor and elevation of the institutions in whose 
behalf they are held. — The longer I live the more deep is my conviction that 
the training which is denominated Liberal Education, is of little real value, 
either to the individual who receives it, or to the community of which he 
is a member, unless it be accompanied and directed by true religion. To 
labor to impart a high degree of the former to him who knows nothing of 



33 

the latter, is like putting a weapon of keen edge and of great power in 
the hands of a madman. He may not use it for destruction ; but there is 
the highest probability that he will not employ it for good. 

I do not know, my respected friends, on what principles, as to one point, 
your coming festival is to be conducted. Whether your toasts or senti- 
ments are to be accompanied with the use of intoxicating drinks, or with 
those only of a different kind. If the former, I feel at liberty only to say, 
that, after having been for two and twenty years a pledged abstainer from 
all that can intoxicate, and convinced as I am, with daily growing confi- 
dence that this system of abstinence from stimulating beverages is desirable 
and important for all classes of men, but peculiarly so for youth, and above 
all for the members of our literary institutions, I can take no part in 
countenancing an opposite system. But if your anniversary feast is to be 
conducted without the use of intoxicating beverages, then I would most 
respectfully propose a sentiment to be disposed of at the time and in the 
way which your wisdom may dictate. 

Sincerely hoping and praying that every thing ornamental and gratify- 
ing may attend your anniversary, and that our beloved and venerated Alma 
Mater may every year grow in strength, in honor, and in usefulness. 

Your fellow graduate, 

SAMUEL MILLER. 

5. Thomas Biddle — The oldest graduate riving in Philadelphia — Our 
much respected guest ; ever devoted to the progress and prosperity of her 
University. 

Mr. Biddle being loudly called for, responded to the above toast in a 
short and earnest address, which was listened to with the most marked 
attention. He urged upon his fellow Alumni the duty of cherishing our 
own interests as citizens of Philadelphia, and of a commonwealth so great 
as Pennsylvania. He then referred to his College days, and said he well 
recollected part of the closing address of the Rev. Dr. John Ewing, the 
Provost, to the class of 1791, of which he, (Mr. B.) was a member. It 
was to this effect — that while we should respect the wisdom and learning 
of antiquity, and of eminent men, we ought not to bow to them implicitly. 
He recommended us to pause before adopting an opposite conclusion, in 
order to investigate things. That while in our course through life, we should 
endeavour to conciliate ; yet truth was ever to be considered as the great 
object of our pursuit, and its diffusion should be regarded as tending to the 
happiness of our own common country. He closed by passing a beautiful 
tribute to his Alma Mater. 

6. u Dear Philadelphia." 

As this phrase of Dr. Franklin was made the "text" of Mr. Reed's 
address the preceding evening, its announcement was received with im- 
mense applause. 

7. The Orator of this Year — William B. Reed, Esq. — His able defence 
of our cherished Institution, and his well grounded views of learning and 
education, entitle him to a high rank among his brother graduates. 

This sentiment revived the enthusiasm which had been awakened by the 
address of the preceding evening, and was followed by loud acclamations, 
to which Mr. Reed responded as follows : — 

Mr. Reed said, that having made a speech last evening of some hour 

3 



34 

and a half in length, which had been listened to with kind attention, he 
would not trespass further now, than to make his most sincere acknow- 
ledgments for the feeling that had been expressed towards him. He had 
made an effort to stir the heart of Philadelphia, and to show how much 
really she had at stake as to scholarship and high education. He had 
knocked loudly at the gates of one of our venerable institutions, and trusted 
that the guardians who watched at it would be fully awakened to a sense 
of its capacity and responsibility. The Graduates could do no more. They 
had come to show their interest, and here their function ceases. What else 
was to be done, depended not only on the administration of the College, 
but on public sentiment in the community, which must be awakened in the 
cause. Trustees and Professors may do all they can, but they will fail unless 
their fellow-citizens rally round them. A celebration like yesterday's and 
to-day's does great good. It not only enlivens, but it teaches us, and it 
teaches others. There is something in these academic festivals which 
humanizes us vastly ; softens down the rugged asperities of life — and makes 
us feel there is something worth living for, besides hard work. I could not 
help thinking last night what a pleasure it must be to the eminent political 
men, whom accident brought together, to share in our ceremonies ; to feel 
that they were safe for a while from politics — the lawyer safe from law — 
the doctor from physic, and the clergy from theology — to listen to literary 
matters very plainly told, but still to literature. Nor will I disguise the 
intense pleasure which I felt in knowing that among my voluntary listeners 
— beside our distinguished graduate, who is here to-night — was one, whom 
now I can praise without fear of flattery ; and whom every College-boy in 
the land — it was so when I was in College, a long time ago, and is so now 
— has been taught to think of as America's peculiar orator — as the man 
who has a fame beyond all others, in the elements of popular American 
eloquence — the eloquence of a manly spirit finding vont in graceful words. 
I felt very proud to be the speaker, when Henry Clay was among my 
kind and attentive listeners. I felt very proud to talk of American history, 
when I had close at my side one who, if I mistake not, went into the pub- 
lic councils of the nation the year that I was born, and has been part of 
American history ever since. I hope, and I know, that he took pleasure 
in hearing good hearty words said for Philadelphia, where he has so many 
friends. He, with the heart of a Kentuckian, will not think worse of any 
man for speaking well of his home. Yes, Mr. President, there were many 
thoughts and associations that crowded on my mind last night, to which I 
gave no utterance. I had another distinguished listener (Mr. Walker). 
We have him here to-night — one of our own men — a University man in 
more senses than one — for if he has not the blood of the founder of the 
College in his veins — if he is not a descendant of Dr. Franklin, his wife 
and children are — and it is not the only time, he will admit, that " annexa- 
tion" has done him honor. He is a connexion of ours by marriage, and 
I insist on saying that the best lessons he ever learned — the dearest con- 
nexion he ever formed he owes to Philadelphia. There are some bonds 
which neither Pennsylvania nor Mississippi dare repudiate. Nor is this 
the only association that was pressing on my mind. Close by my side was 
sitting, listening with attention that made me very proud, a venerable man 
who illustrates most strongly how good a Philadelphian a New Englander 
makes when you catch him young. I mean our fellow-citizen, Mr. Breck 
— a truer and more loyal citizen of the community does not exist. And 



35 

you will be surprised when I say to you, that unless my memory much 
misleads me, he distinctly recollects seeing the battle of Bunker Hill, and 
being carried as a child through the American lines at Cambridge. He 
came here then, and he has been one of us ever since. I was glad to 
have such a listener. One word more, Mr. President, and I have done. 
Dr. Franklin wrote a series of Essays many years ago, called " Plain 
Truth," to arouse the community in time of hostile danger. We would do 
well to read them now. In one of them he says, " after all, all that Phila- 
delphia wants is public spirit, and a few barrels of gunpowder." It is the 
truth yet. Gunpowder is a very good thing in more ways than one — and 
in no way better than in firing salutes and rousing drowsiness from its 
slumbers. We tried last night to fire salutes for Philadelphia, and I hope 
we will keep it up. I give you, with renewed thanks for the honor you 
have done me, the following sentiment : 

The Grown Jewels of Philadelphia — Her Charities — her Science — her 
Scholarship, and her Historic Fame. They are bright enough for her sons 
to be proud to show them. 

Mr. Reed sat down amid renewed and continued cheers. 

8. The Faculty of Arts. — For learning, science, and ability, Philadelphia 
yields the palm to none. 

Prof. Frazer responded to this sentiment in a brief and appropriate ad- 
dress — of which we regret we have no sketch. 

9. Samuel B. Wylie, D. D. — Emeritus Professor of the Greek and 
Latin Languages. — Honorably identified for half a century with the cause 
of Classical Education in Philadelphia ; and affectionately remembered by 
a multitude of pupils; may he in his old age enjoy all the happiness of a 
faithful and laborious life. 

In answer to this sentiment, a letter from Dr. Wylie was read, express- 
ing " his delight in the centennial commemoration of the Institution, and 
hoping that it might be continued for many centuries, calculated as it is to 
rouse into potent activity new energies, which, heretofore, for want of some 
such excitement, have been too dormant, and expressing his regret that 
the state of his health denied him the gratification of being present." 

10. The Class o/1819. — We delight to recognize among her members 
many, who, by learning and talents, and the illustrious stations to which 
they have attained, have added lustre to our Institution. 

This sentiment was received with the most enthusiastic applause, and 
loud calls were heard from every part of the room for Mr. Walker — who, 
amid continued cheers, rose and said : 

I thank you sincerely my friends and brother Alumni of the University 
of Pennsylvania — my native State, for the very kind manner in which you 
have received the toast in honor of my Class of 1819, and the flattering sen- 
timent from your President in regard to myself, to which I can but feebly 
endeavour to reply. But, however inadequate language may be to express 
my emotions, my heart responds with gratitude, and this day will be fondly 
remembered by me until the last pulse of life shall cease to beat. Beside 
me is your worthy President, [Mr. Gilpin] my intimate associate, class- 
mate and friend. Together we learned many a College lesson, especially 
in the classics and mathematics. He was an able mathematician, and 



36 

while at College compiled two large quarto volumes on that subject, which 
I cannot hear that he has given to the public. His translations also from 
the Greek and Roman classics were many and excellent, especially from 
his favorite Odes of Horace, and it is he — the Cabinet Minister, so distin- 
guished in law, literature and politics, who should have been called upon 
to respond to the toast in honor of the Class of 1819- Although many of 
us now meet here for the first time, there is a bond of friendship and fra- 
ternity which links our hearts together. We are children of the same 
beloved Alma Mater. Our good old mother has now completed her hun- 
dredth year, but though old, she is not decrepit. No ! she commences this 
day the race of a second century with all the treasured knowledge and 
experience of age, but with the vigor of health and youth. Yesterday, an 
eloquent Alumnus (Mr. W. B. Reed,) gathered together her jewels from 
among the illustrious dead — the founders — the teachers — the patrons and 
alumni of the University. The array was bright and glorious for the past, 
but who shall set bounds for the future ? who say how many Alumni will 
celebrate our next centenary ; from how many honored millions of united 
freemen, spreading over how many continents will they come ? from how 
many States — still bound together by the same ever-to-be-preserved Ame- 
rican Union ? Methinks I see them assembled around the festive board ; 
I hear them reading out our last night's eloquent epitome of the history 
of the first Century of the University ; I see them looking back even upon 
the scene where we are now assembled. Welcome ! Through the vista of 
a century, we bid these future Alumni welcome ! hoping only that in the 
effulgence of their Centenary, they may look back with pleasure and 
affection upon that we now commemorate. 

But I must detain you no longer than by begging to offer the following 
sentiment : 

Our beloved Alma Mater : the University of Pennsylvania — Her first 
hundred years just closed, so well portrayed last night by an able, eloquent 
and devoted son. May each successive year and century inscribe upon her 
records imperishable names and ever living deeds of glory ! 

Mr. Walker was warmly applauded throughout his speech. 

11. The Absent Alumni — Distant in all parts of our country, and of 
the world, but present in the memories and affections of their classmates and 
brother Alumni. 

12. Woman — A mistress of Arts, who robs the Bachelor of his degree, 
and forces him to study Philosophy by means of " curtain lectures." 

The regular toasts having been read, a number of volunteer toasts were 
offered, from which we select the following : 

_ By William B. Reed. — The Trustees of the University — Chosen for their 
high social character, esteemed in every relation of life, honored by the 
post they occupy — may they remember the Greek orator's precept — " Ac- 
tion, action, action." 

By Rev. Kingston Goddard. — The Graduates of the University of Penn- 
sylvania— May they, like the kite of the immortal Franklin, be borne to 
a purer and higher atmosphere, only to transmit to those beneath them, 
the light of science and of God. 

By Geo. Emlen, Jr., Esq. — Alexander Dallas Bache — His high scien- 



37 

tific acquirements and warm devotion to the cause of Education, have 
secured for him the esteem and regard of every lover of his country. 
Mr. Emlen prefaced his sentiment with the fellowing remarks : 
Mr. President : — We had last evening an eloquent and just tribute paid 
to the memory of Dr. Franklin, for his valuable services as one of the 
founders of the Institution, whose hundredth anniversary we now celebrate. 
We have had also on this occasion, by the presence of one of our distin- 
guished guests, (Mr. Walker,) an association with that name of an equally 
interesting character — a guest, who, as has been said, if he cannot boast of 
having the blood of Dr. Franklin in his veins, his wife and children may. 
Sir, I would bring in another of the family, who, if not known to all here 
from their connection with him as a Professor in our University, is cer- 
tainly known to them for his high scientific acquirements. I refer to 
Alexander Dallas Bache. Mr. President, I am a graduate of the year 1832 
— the first class which commenced their studies and graduated under the 
care of the new faculty, of which the Rt. Rev. Bishop Delancey was the 
head, and of which Professor Bache was an efficient member. No one who 
has the good fortune to have been a pupil of Professor Bache, can forget 
the amiable simplicity of his character — his devotion to the cause of science 
— his true and loyal attachment to the University, and his warm and 
abiding friendship. It has been my lot to be associated with this gentle- 
man in another place — as Principal of the Central High School of Phila- 
delphia, and he brought there the Exercise of the same talents, the same 
industry, and a warm and constant devotion to the great cause of popular 
education. By him was the machinery for conducting that highly flourish- 
ing Institution constructed, whose organization has been so perfect, and 
founded on such enlarged and correct principles — as to afford the means 
of education within the limits prescribed by its directors, for more than 
five hundred pupils, with a force, and at an expense which are sometimes 
required for one hundred. In no one particular were the abilities of that 
eminent man more conspicuous than in his attention to the details of his 
duties. While he had strong and vigorous general views upon the subjects 
and interests committed to his charge, he filled up, thoroughly and effec- 
tively, all the minor parts, so that the whole, working together, produced 
that perfect and orderly system, which alone can produce the best practical 
results. Sir, Prof. Bache now occupies a post the highest in its scientific 
character that a nation can bestow. As Superintendent of the Coast Sur- 
vey — to him is committed one of the most interesting and valuable labors 
of our time — one, upon whose faithful results depend not only the solution 
of some of the most difficult problems of modern science, but in its every 
day application and use, the safety of our marine, and the extension and 
success of our commerce. The same abilities, zeal and acquirements, will, 
without doubt, produce their successful results there ; and we may, there- 
fore, at this festive board, well repeat his name, who, attached to us, I will 
not say in the prime of his life — for it has all been prime — but in his 
earlier days, as Professor, he does not forget us in the high national position 
he now occupies. 

By J. Reese Fry, Esq. — The Medical Profession — Honorably repre- 
sented by eminent names on our list of Alumni. 
To which Dr. Joseph Carson replied as follows : 
While returning an acknowledgment on behalf of my medical brethren 



38 

of the Alumni for the compliment just paid to us, I cannot but recur to 
the fact that for the origin of our Medical School, we are indebted to one 
who was educated and graduated in the Department of Arts in this Uni- 
versity, and who became the projector and first labourer in the enterprize 
of teaching medicine. We have been reproached with being under the 
necessity of enlisting foreign professional talent — of calling upon other 
States to assist us in sustaining our reputation. It is, sir, with just pride 
then, that I call up the name of one who belongs to us, and I therefore 
propose 

The Memory of Dr. John Morgan — An Alumnus of the first class of 
Graduates, and the Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in 
the University of Pennsylvania. 

By M. Russel Thayer, Esq. — The Memory of Charles Kirhham. — The 
loveliness of a pure and accomplished mind has built for him a monument, 
to which the companions of his Academic life will ever resort on this 
anniversary, as to a shrine where is deposited, as in the tomb of Agricola, 
quicquid amavimus, quicquid mirati sumus, in azternitate temporum. 

By J. B. Gest, Esq. — The future Law School of the University of Penn- 
sylvania.— 'May she, under the guidance of one" of our own graduates, 
become as eminent in her peculiar branch, as the Medical Department has 
long since been ; and may her graduates add new honors to our ancient 
Institution. 

By J. B. Reynolds, Esq. — The Rev. Dr. William Smith — The first 
Provost of the University. By his generous exertions in the cause of 
education, and the ability with which he presided over our own Institution 
in the most troublous period of our history, he has earned for himself a 
name deserving of the veneration in which we hold his memory. 

By Dr. John L. Ludlow. — The Rev. Dr. Ewing — The second Provost. 
For twenty-three years his distinguished ability and ripe scholarship, added 
dignity to his high station. 

By W. Arthur Jackson, Esq. — The Alumni Professors. 

This toast was responded to in a few appropriate remarks, by Professor 
Henry Reed. 

By Horatio G. Jones, Jr., Esq. — The Hon. George Sharswood. — The 
talents and ability with which he fills his judicial station, give ample tes- 
timony in favor of our Institution, and we are proud to hail him as a 
brother graduate. 

By George Harding, Esq. — The Class of 1838. — Always zealous to 
advance the interests of the University. 

This was replied to by Theodore Cuyler, Esq., a graduate of that year, 
who remarked in substance : 

Mr. President, — The mention of my name by the gentleman who has 
called to your remembrance the Class of 1838, will be my apology as a 
humble member of that class in replying to his kind remarks. 

I thank him sincerely — thank him from the heart — in their behalf. 

I have a right to feel proud, when I look around me, and notice the 
gentlemen whom it is my privilege to call classmates — and the more so 
when I listen to the language which the kindness of my friend has applied 
to the Graduates of that year. 



39 

Most of all do I thank him, Mr. President, for that tribute to the Class 
of 1838, which spoke of their generous warmth in College friendship, and 
their true-hearted love for their Alma Mater. With them these feelings 
have found vent in acts— and by them, the walls of our time-honored 
University have been adorned with an admirable portrait of one — who in 
their College days so won upon their love — their esteem — their admiration 
for high scholarship, and true refinement of mind, and heart, and manner — 
that years afterward they came up from the busy toils and cares of active 
life — with the impress of these feelings still fresh upon their hearts — to 
add to their early love the tribute of a mature judgment. 

Occasions like these, Mr. President, are full of good for us in many 
ways. 

They lay the scattered embers of our College friendship close together. 
They bring up from the highways of the busy world the members of the 
same academic household, to tell with all its moral the story of their life, 
and to start thence afresh upon its duties full of renewed pleasant memo- 
ries of the happiest days of life. They rekindle the attachment which 
every Alumnus ought to feel — for that parent institution — in whose bosom, 
and from whose blood they were nurtured. 

There have been eloquent tributes paid this evening, Mr. President — 
to former Provosts of this University, by gentlemen whose privilege it 
was to enjoy their instructions. The associations of such an occasion are 
naturally with the past, and it is from this fact alone that we have as yet 
forgotten living worth. 

It was my privilege to enjoy the instructions of the gentleman who now 
presides over the destinies of the University. He would reprove me, were 
I to express in language the full feelings of my heart when I recur to my 
remembrance of College life under his instructions ; and in this assembly 
where his worth is so well known and so truly felt, such remarks are not 
needed. 

I propose, therefore, as a toast without comment, " the health of the 
Rev. Dr. Ludlow" — the present Provost of the University. 

By the Hon. Joseph M. Doran. — The Memory of Kev. Dr. Beasley, 
for fifteen years Provost of the University. 

By James R. Ludlow, Esq. — The University of Pennsylvania. — She 
has already furnished in succession two Cabinet Councillors for the Union. 
May she yet furnish a President. 

By John P. Montgomery, Esq. — Pennsylvania. In position, the Key- 
stone of the Federal Arch ; in physical resources, pre-eminent among her 
sisters of the Union. Let the efforts of her sons never cease, until the 
proudest rank in education and intelligence be also conceded to her. 

By Dr. Elias E. Wilson. — The Philomathean and Zelosophic Societies. — 
Emulous only to excel each other in nourishing the flame of learning. 
" Sic itur ad astra." 

By Caldwell K. Biddle.— Our Alma Mater. — For a hundred years she 
has conferred benefits upon the community. May it prove grateful, and 
assist and encourage her in extending her sphere of usefulness. 

By M. Russel Thayer, Esq. — Professor RosweU Park. 

During the evening various other toasts were given, and speeches deli- 
vered by many of the Graduates, but our already extended report forbids 



40 

even a sketch of what was said. Thus closed the Anniversary of the First 
Centenary of our University. 

From the deep interest and cordial sympathy which pervaded the very 
numerous assemblage of the graduates assembled, it was thought by the 
committee, that it would be not inappropriate to add the foregoing account 
of the proceedings as an appendix to the first oration delivered before the 
Society. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




